Can a brownie be too rich? I suspect that many brownie-lovers would answer with an immediate — and perhaps slightly defensive — no.

Historical chauvinists might disagree. The exact origin of the brownie is hazy, but the first published recipes, from 1906 and 1907, contained less chocolate and fewer eggs than most contemporary recipes. The result was probably what today are euphemistically called "cakelike brownies," a term that covers all manner of dry, crumbly sins. Generally, as good chocolate and butter have become cheaper and more widely available, sensible home cooks have implicitly agreed that fudge-like brownies represent progress, not a perversion.

Let us then accept that the purpose of a brownie recipe is to maximize fudginess and minimize everything else. The chief impediment to this goal is flour. Brownies need flour, of course — without it, they'd be eggy chocolate soup — but too much flour makes them parched, stiff, and literally hard to swallow.

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